Freenode was “acquired” a while back, people were looking on it dubiously.
Then last week (or the week before) volunteer staff resigned en masse saying that the new owners were planning on taking control of the project’s direction. A number of projects using freenode for chat started looking at alternative just in case.
As GP notes, this looking around was done in the heat of all the resignation, but was not necessarily a done deal for all projects, after all nothing has changed yet.
Today, freenode highjacked / locked hundreds of channels mentioning libera (the alternative network set up by some of the resigning staff) out of nowhere, proving that the network most definitely could not be trusted anymore.
In case you missed it, last week the staff running freenode for 20 years were evicted by legal threats and the sudden change in how the network is run is because of new management.
That particular incident was the moment when the staff all resigned.
They had already seen it coming and had made preparations. All the important things have moved to a new domain:, see: https://libera.chat/
Once the dust settles, basically what's effectively left to say is that everything that made freenode great will be renamed to libera.chat; whilst an imposter will (sadly) be left in control of the old freenode.net name.
The story has been breaking over the past few days.
Wikipedia has links to news stories:
That's not an accurate representation of the freenode situation: freenode was taken over, the old staff disagreed with the decisions of the new owner and left to create Libera.Chat, and then the new ownership started banning people and taking over channels for talking about Libera, changed the server software, effectively deleted the nickname database, and is producing really delusional messaging, such as https://freenode.com/news/introducing-irc .
Some untrustworthy entrepreneur bought Freenode. Network staff quit in response and started Libera. The new Freenode staff then proceeded to give users every reason to migrate to Libera.
This Twitter drama is strikingly similar to Freenode. A rich guy bought it, people started moving to Libera.chat in small numbers and advertising their new channel on Freenode in the topic. There wasn't a huge exodus, though.
Then this new owner started taking over channels and kicking everyone out that had mention of a Libera.chat channel in its topic, forcing everyone to move all at once.
I haven't heard of anyone still on Freenode since then.
See also: the way freenode went under. Some asshole seized power, and then nothing happened for a bit. Then staffers got replaced as they got too uppity. Then a bit later anyone mentioning libera.chat in official freenode channels got kicked. Then the mods of any channel mentioning libera.chat in the topic got replaced. And then there was no one left as everyone had moved over to libera.
I meant I had assumed the libera.chat staff still had admin status in freenode, and had been behind this move, but apparently they all got removed a week ago.
Someone "bought" Freenode, kicked out the existing staff, who formed Libera chat as a result. The new owner of Freenode then speedran self-destruction of the site, first banning every channel that mentioned libera in its topic, and then wiping all of chanserv and nickserv and starting from scratch.
This is very reminiscent of the "ban everyone who mentioned libera in its topic" phase of the self-immolation, which prompted a lot of people who had previously been hesitant or only considering whether to move to libera basically having the choice made for them.
Christel, the previous freenode head of staff, sold freenode to andrew lee (then of PIA). This was downplayed at the time, both publicly and to staff, so this is effectively delayed drama that would have happened in 2017 otherwise.
Christel stepped down, new staff lead shut out Andrew Lee, not realising the depth of his ownership - helped by both Christel and Andrew Lee downplaying it in the past. When it became clear that "Freenode" was owned by Andrew Lee, and not the volunteer run organisation they believed it to be, drama ensued over whether she had the legal right to (probably yes), whether it was morally appropriate to (probably not) and what she actually sold (Freenode runs via volunteer staff on loaned servers, none of which freenode ltd owns or has contracts for, so it basically just owns a domain and a website).
After the legal discussions found that Andrew Lee did legally own whatever freenode itself owned, the staff all quit and formed libera.chat, their own network. Andrew Lee brought in new staff to freenode and some policy changes (notably allowing network ops to reclaim channels that were abandoned as redirects, and toning down the code of conduct portion).
You.. you've heard about the whole Libera thing, right? The thing where literally all of existing staff went "We're being legally forced to do the thing. freenode is bad now. we have an alternative available"?
Freenode's management changed. Libera.Chat is a new organization with new servers not associated with Freenode -- but many organizations that had previously maintained IRC channels on Freenode are moving to Libera.Chat.
Some channels I was in on Freenode were hesitant to move, but they were then taken over by Freenode staff in the wave of channel hijackings (for example, because they had topics like "We're discussing whether to move to Libera, please <bla>") which expedited the move for all of them.
Andrew Lee formed a contract with the head staffer of freenode a few years ago, both of whom insisted that it was only a sponsorship, but did not release any further info, and that Andrew would have no operational/executive control over the network.
Now, it turns out that the contract was a sale of everything that could be had, and Andrew does want full operational and executive control.
Learning this, the volunteer staff resign as a bloc, and move to start an alternative. 250 projects (from Ubuntu, to PostgreSQL, SourceHut, the IRCv3 Working Group, etc) have all left freenode to head to Libera the volunteer network.
Losing all his projects, Andrew insists that "freenode is for FOSS" while at the same time shaming foss projects who want to exercise the freedom to choose their own chat platform and hiring a very dubious set of IRC "personalities" as staff.
If anything removed any doubt about whether we should have moved to libera, this is it. There is no going back now, you've erased any trust that I or any project members had for "freenode".
Our channel was still moderated by all of our original project staff while recommending other members move.
To say that "many of these channels were simply wildly unmoderated and closed" to justify an indiscriminate automated action is ridiculous.
Then last week (or the week before) volunteer staff resigned en masse saying that the new owners were planning on taking control of the project’s direction. A number of projects using freenode for chat started looking at alternative just in case.
As GP notes, this looking around was done in the heat of all the resignation, but was not necessarily a done deal for all projects, after all nothing has changed yet.
Today, freenode highjacked / locked hundreds of channels mentioning libera (the alternative network set up by some of the resigning staff) out of nowhere, proving that the network most definitely could not be trusted anymore.
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